The present invention relates generally to the field of telephony, and more particularly to increasing the efficiency of automated telephony systems.
In automated telephony systems (called herein automated systems) a problem sometimes arises when a caller is ineffective at using the automated system to process a transaction. (As used herein, the term “caller” includes a called party that may use an automated system or may be put in a queue.) Some examples of transactions that can be processed on an automated system are: a caller's inquiry, an order the caller wishes to place, a desired change to a caller's account, or a billing question, just to name a few possibilities. A common example of an automated system is an interactive voice response system (IVR). The IVR presents audible questions to a caller, and prompts the caller to respond in some way. Two examples of ways for a caller to respond to the prompts of an IVR system are: (1) by speaking in conjunction with an automated speech recognition (ASR) system, and (2) by using a telephone keypad response system. (The term “telephone keypad” as used herein refers to any device which is contacted to transmit a response.) Using an ASR system, the caller responds by verbalizing his or her answer. Using a telephone keypad response system, the caller responds by pressing a number or symbol on his or her telephone keypad. Other automated systems and ways to answer prompts of an automated system can be envisioned by one of ordinary skill in the art.
The problem of ineffectively processing a transaction on an automated system can arise, for example, when an ASR system has difficulty understanding the verbalized response of the caller. On the telephone keypad response system, the problem can arise when the caller presses a button that is not an acceptable response. These mistakes require that the caller repeat the input step in order to try to elicit a response that the automated system will understand and accept. Requiring the caller to repeat his or her input takes up extra time of both the caller and the automated system and furthermore may frustrate the caller. To limit the extra use of time of the caller and the automated system, a typical practice is to use a mistake counter which keeps count of the total number of re-promptings. Upon reaching a certain threshold, the caller is transferred to a live operator (called herein an agent). Not only is this practice beneficial to a caller, but it saves time for the company, as after a certain point, the probability of a successful automatic transaction becomes diminishingly small, and thus further re-prompting is usually ineffective. In these systems, the same threshold for number of re-promptings required before the call is transferred is used in all situations.
However, there is a problem with the current mistake counter practice described above. It is common for some callers to have problems when first interacting with the system, but then they become more proficient and are able to complete the remainder of the dialog successfully without error. The mistake counter which does a simple count may result in the forfeit of an opportunity for successful automation. A further consideration is that a caller may be a repeat customer. If so, then the caller's history of successes or failures utilizing the automated system could be helpful in determining if the current call is likely to proceed successfully. For example, if the caller is currently struggling with a step that he or she has previously navigated successfully, transferring the caller too quickly may again result in the forfeit of an opportunity for successful automation.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,411,687 (hereinafter '687) generally involves a method of routing a call received by a call center. The call is first transferred to an automated system where information about the call is elicited from the caller. As the caller gives responses to the questions, a behavioral response device analyzes the caller's response according to predetermined criteria to identify callers having certain behavioral characteristics. When these behavioral characteristics are identified, one of two approaches is taken. One approach is to route the caller to an agent that is best trained for handling that kind of call. A second approach is to alert the standard agent who normally receives incoming calls that there is a caller with special needs on the line. With this pre-warning, the agent could adapt his or her style to match the needs of the caller. However, in this art at all calls are directed to some sort of agent, whether a typical agent or a specialized agent. Thus, the automated system does not reduce the number of callers that must speak to an agent. Rather, the automated system, at most, just sorts the received calls.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,584,180 (hereinafter '180) involves processing a call on an automated system—specifically an ASR system. It involves allowing a caller to complete their call on the ASR system, even when the system encounters difficulty in understanding the caller's response. The ASR receives a voice response from the caller, synthesizes the response, and then sends back the response to the caller for confirmation that the voice input was correctly recognized. If the caller responds negatively to the confirmation message, the ASR system plays the previously received voice input from the caller as audio to an agent serving the role as a screener interface. The screener listens to the audio and enters what he or she thinks is the caller's response. The screener's response is synthesized into a voice response message by the ASR and transmitted to the caller for confirmation. Only if the caller responds negatively to the screener's interpretation of the caller's message is the call switched to an operator for manual handling of the caller's special problem. Otherwise, the caller continues utilizing the ASR system until call completion or until another problem arises. However, in this art, when a problem arises, there is still a need for human interaction at a call center or the like in order to keep a caller on the ASR system. Furthermore, the complete confirmation loop is quite time intensive. Additionally, this art can only be used on an ASR system, but is not applicable to an IVR that utilizes a telephone keypad for caller input.
AT&T has developed and implemented a system called “How may I help you?” (hereinafter “HMIHY”) which utilizes natural language understanding (NLU) technology. Instead of a caller listening to a series of voice prompts and determining the appropriate response, the HMIHY system lets a caller respond directly to a question such as, “How may I help you?” The NLU technology enables the system to: (1) understand a caller's response, (2) route a caller to the appropriate personnel, and (3) ask the caller additional questions when more information is needed. However, when the HMIHY system does not understand a given response the system must repeat instructions or try to illicit information in some other way. When reaching a standard threshold value for the number of mistakes, the call is transferred. By using only one threshold value, a caller may be transferred either prematurely or after too long of a delay.
Thus, a problem that emerges from the art is having only a single threshold for measuring when a user is unsuccessful at processing his or her call on an automated system. For example, the system may measure how many mistakes the caller makes—an “inefficiency metric”—and have only one threshold for that metric, i.e., ten mistakes. Accordingly, in this example, all calls will be transferred to a live agent when any caller makes ten mistakes. Having only a single threshold for all situations can make a call center unresponsive to the various needs of different callers. Thus, at least one of two main goals of a call center—maximizing its efficiency and insuring customer satisfaction—will likely not be met.